A Gathering of Spirits: Japan's Ghost Story Tradition: From Folklore and Kabuki to Anime and Manga

by Drazen, Patrick

  The anime begins with the ruins of an old school. A new school has been built next door and demolition of the old building is underway. Yet the viewer hears a voice: “So, I wonder how many years I’ve been like this? But, since I’m already a part of the never ending story, I’ve accepted it as my destiny.” The camera travels through the dilapidated ruins of the old school, and the viewer imagines that the school itself is doing the talking. We then hear that “she is coming.” She is Emiru Nagakura, who has come repeatedly to visit the ruins of the old school—because it was her old school.

  Emiru makes her way onto the grounds of the school, where a bulldozer waits to clear everything away. Her only concern at this point is in rescuing a soda bottle, which she says holds “my past and my future.” At this point, however, strange things start to happen: a crow appears on the school roof, then dozens more crows. Some objects, she remembers, have their own spirits, which can survive even centuries after they were built—a very Shinto notion. The word “tsukumogami” is invoked at this point: a reference to tools that have either “grown” awareness by being very old, or grown a bitter soul because they’ve been brusquely thrown away. She narrowly misses being flattened by a door that falls off its hinges, and the deck of Tarot cards she carries forecasts destruction by showing The Tower upside-down. Clouds appear in the sky and she has to take shelter in the school, where a disembodied voice tells her menacingly, “I won’t let you go until you let go of yourself.” It’s then she notices that her clothes are dry, the crows are gone, and the sun is shining outside as if it hadn’t rained at all.

  We find out that this sort of happening isn’t unusual for Emiru. Since childhood she’s believed in all sorts of unconventional things, from UFOs in the sky to fairies in the flower garden. As a result, most of her peers want nothing to do with her, dismissing her as a liar or, at best, creepy. She finally met one kindred spirit, a boy who transferred from another school…

  Back in the ruined school, Emiru almost gets hit by a falling light fixture. The ghostly voice of the school tells her that it will never let the place become a park. The illusions begin to pile up, ranging from prosaic objects like book bags and sneakers to a shower, but this time of blood. Emiru finally stumbles into a classroom where her friend had drawn a magic circle on the floor; he promised that its magic would protect her, whether he was there or not.

  As she sleeps, she remembers a time when the two of them, investigating a hole in the floor of a classroom, find an old (circa 1919) soda bottle. Soon thereafter, the boy has to move away. They wash out the bottle and put a note in it, promising to meet again when they grow up. At this point, we realize that the “narrator” of this story has been the spirit of the bottle.

  The bottle-spirit, realizing that the school is inhabited by a tsukumogami, creates a vision of Emiru’s boyfriend (who’s known in the story only as “Darling”). Instead of leading her to safety, he leads Emiru up to the attic where the clockworks are housed. It seems Darling’s spirit was created by the school, not by the bottle. Emiru challenges the school as to why it’s putting her through all this; the bottle spirit responds that the school has a lingering attachment to this world, and tries to tell Emiru to throw away such attachments in herself. “If you lose something and nobody remembers it, then it’s nothing forever,” the school spirit tells her. Rather than go into oblivion when the school is destroyed, the spirit wants to live on—through Emiru. She allows the school to possess her; suddenly, she’s floating above the landscape when the school was built in 1919. All she sees is farmland, which makes her realize that she was wrong to think that she had to keep the school’s memory alive. “Memories aren’t lost. Even if the school building doesn’t stay, the building will exist forever in my memory. And, even if I die, my memory will live forever.”

  This perception quiets the spirit of the school, and allows Emiru to search for the soda bottle. We see her find it; we see her leaving the school. She stops and says good-bye to the soda bottle. The last we see of it officially is a few months later, with the school gone and the ground being prepared for construction; the bottle, still undisturbed, is shown just below the surface of the ground, the green glass of the bottle reflecting the sun and clouds passing by overhead. Actually, this is one of only two of the twelve episodes with additional footage: as the credits end, we see the soda bottle, washed off, given a proud place on one of the bulldozers at the construction site.

  CHAPTER 22: THE SCHOOL BOARD—KOKKURI-SAN

  Several Japanese stories of the supernatural turn on something that resembles the western Ouija board. The notion of providing some way for the dead or other spirits to communicate with the living is old and widespread; the Chinese had something like it about 1200 B.C.E., called fuji. Greece in the sixth century B.C.E. also had such a device. Although the so-called Ouija board as we know it was patented in 1891, it’s been around a lot longer, and first surfaced in Japan around the beginning of the Meiji era.[90]

  In Japan the board known as kokkuri-san[91] is drawn on paper each time it is used. At the center is a grid of the letters of the alphabet (in Japanese, this means 46 letters instead of the 26 characters of the Anglo-American alphabet); the words “yes” and “no” are also written, sometimes the numbers 1 through 10 or 0 through 9, and some have a drawing of a Shinto torii arch. While some versions use the western spade-shaped miniature table, called a planchette, which is supposedly moved across the Ouija board by an otherworldly spirit, in Japan usually the players either touch a finger to a small coin (a ten-yen piece, one of Japan’s smallest coins) or they hold onto a pen or pencil as the point moves from letter to letter. Sometimes, when Japanese use a planchette, there’s a piece of paper in each leg with one of the three characters of the name kokkuri.

  A benign use of this divination method appears in the Shaman King manga. Episode 49 introduces the reader to Tamao, an eleven-year-old girl and apprentice fortune-teller who has been studying for years with the father of the main character, Yoh Asakura. She also has a very deep crush on Yoh. Between her waiflike appearance, her position in the Asakura household and her adoration of Yoh, we know her motives to be pure and her powers to be untainted.

  This can’t be said of everyone who uses kokkuri-san, however, and this is where the trouble starts. The Korean film Bunshinsaba (2004), which features kokkuri-san and is heavily influenced by Japanese films in the same genre, focuses on three girls who turn to kokkuri-san to get back at a school bully. In the process, they unleash the vengeful ghost of another student, who had committed suicide 30 years earlier. This is a good example of the pattern such stories take.

  These next examples illustrate the same lesson: that having impure motives when dealing with kokkuri-san can lead to the summoning of very unhelpful spirits. Putting motives aside, another lesson offered in these stories is that, if you insist on dealing with the spirit world without a professional medium, you do so at your own risk.

  66. “I’m not a dog!”

  Shibuya Psychic Research, the team of youthful exorcists of the Ghost Hunt manga, is hired by the head of the Student Council at Ryokuryou High School to investigate supernatural activity. There have been cases of food poisoning, spontaneous fires, at least one suicide, and students being attacked by a phantom dog. While the principal is skeptical and one teacher, Hideaki Matsuyama, is openly hostile toward the members of Shibuya Psychic Research, the students have been playing kokkuri-san. Most of the time the same thing happens: nothing. Yuko the witch of xxxHolic explains: “Normally occult practices done by amateurs aren’t successful. So they try and try and the only thing they get is empty effort.” (vol. 3, p. 70) In this case, however, the high school was built over a burial ground dating back to the Nara period (C.E. 710-794). Spirits were not only being raised, but sticking around and attacking the school, its occupants, and each other. In a kind of paranormal Darwinism, the spirits started consuming each other, with the strongest survivor threatening to unleash some serious evil, unless SPR co
uld do something about it. This would include the main object of much of the kokkuri-san: the hoped-for spirit murder of the teacher Matsuyama, whose incessant bullying drove one student to suicide, leaving behind the one-line suicide note: “I’m not a dog.”

  In the end the curse is nullified by transferring it back onto the students who caused it; specifically, onto hitogata dolls in place of the students themselves. Many of the dolls are broken so violently that it makes you wonder what would have happened if the curse had bounced back onto the students themselves instead of their dolls.

  67. “Didn’t I say you’d be cursed?”

  Another high school has been dabbling in kokkuri-san in the xxxHolic manga by CLAMP, with the result that “something really bad” seems to be happening at the school. This occurs despite the “precaution” of the game being renamed “angel-san”, in hope that this would lessen any threat. No such luck.

  Yuko the witch sends her hapless student worker Watanuki to investigate. It’s bad enough that he has to be accompanied by another high school student, Domeki, his rival for the attentions of the pretty student Himawari. Even worse, he’s made to look foolish by having to communicate with Yuko by wearing a pair of cones over his ears that look like the “ears” on Chi the computer in another CLAMP manga, Chobits. Watanuki, who’s more than a bit of a whiner, is convinced that Yuko did this just to embarrass him.

  The evening Watanuki and Domeki arrive at the empty, supposedly haunted high school, Watanuki sees thick black smoke surrounding the school building, and picks up a sickening smell inside the building; Domeki isn’t aware of any of that. It seems to be worst on the roof of the school. When they get there, Watanuki hears the sound of girls crying, and finds three girls working a kokkuri-san. One girl is standing off to the side, while the other two are grasping a pen over the piece of paper, which is almost obscured by the repeated drawing of the Japanese command: die. When Watanuki tells the girls to let go of the pen, the girls tearfully say that the kokkuri-san won’t let them; it told them “I won’t let go until you are dead. If the hands separate, you will be cursed.” When Watanuki forces the girls to let go of the pen, the three crying students suddenly change. With evil grins, they say, “Didn’t I say, if the hands separate, you’d be cursed” as they push Watanuki off the roof.

  From Domeki’s point of view, Watanuki has been running around the school roof talking to himself; when he goes over the edge, Domeki saves him from falling. But the spirits at the high school aren’t through. One monstrous shape attacks Domeki even as he’s trying to pull Watanuki back onto the roof; as this happens, the column of black smoke surrounding the school turns into a gigantic serpent that first swallows the monster attacking Domeki, then swallows the earpieces. When the snake goes away, the atmosphere changes to normal.

  We’ve already read Yuko’s explanation of the results of an amateur attempt to contact the spirit-world. But she went on: the boredom of repeated non-results “leads to quite a number of students who start thinking that it would be better if scary things appeared, better if weird things appeared, better if someone happened to die. That would be interesting.” The kokkuri-san responsible for the curse in Ghost Hunt was a conscious attempt to kill an abusive teacher, to avenge a student driven by his abuse to suicide. In this case, however, the evil wishes of the students are motivated more by boredom and a sense of thrill-seeking. The illusion of the girls on the roof, and the monster that attacked Domeki, were “the dregs of ‘innocent curses’ of the students.”

  The giant serpent, on the other hand, was the protecting spirit of the area, a concept that fits into Shinto belief that kami are everywhere and exist for every contingency. It circled the building, keeping the spirits raised by the kokkuri-san from escaping. When it devoured the spirits, it also took the earpieces as an offering; we hear (more accurately, in the manga we read) Yuko telling the snake spirit through the earpieces, “To those who have inhabited this land from long ago, we present this sacrifice to your brave and honorable selves.” Yet, when Watanuki asks Yuko if the serpent was a good spirit, her answer rejects such a simple question: it wasn’t a bad spirit “for you two at that particular time. Good and evil are concepts that humans decide. Those concepts don’t apply to non-humans.”

  68. The Coin and the Angel

  As some fifth graders find out in a 1994 episode of the manga Jigoku Sensei Nube, calling kokkuri-san “Angel-sama” doesn’t automatically make it more benign. Nor does arranging the letters and numbers in the shape of a heart.

  Fifth grader Miki Hosokawa has organized a session of “angel-sama” at the school, which quickly falls into slapstick involving the ten-yen coin. The demon-possessed teacher Nueno puts a stop to it, telling the students to reconsider what they’re doing (while telling them the history mentioned above of kokkuri-san in the Meiji era). Miki tears up the paper with the board and uses the ten-yen coin to make a prank call, but the damage has been done. A ghostly voice tells her over the phone, “You are going to die.”

  When the phone returns the ten-yen coin, Miki takes it to a video arcade; however, when she drops it into a game machine, the machine tells her “You are going to die” and gives back the coin. She even puts the coin into the offering box of a man soliciting charitable donations on the street; that night, a crow bursts through Miki’s bedroom window and drops the ten-yen coin from its beak.

  Nueno tries to exorcise the coin, which at first brings out a lot of poltergeist activity, followed by the appearance of Angel-sama: a handsome, winged boy. However, he reveals his fangs and his true intent: Miki’s summoning him was a sin, punishable by death. Fortunately, Nueno is able to subdue the spirit with the power of his demon claw.

  69. The Devil’s Spell

  One girl tries reading a kokkuri-san-like game in the old school alone at night in an episode of Gakkou no Kaidan. The bad news for the girl is that she’s alone; for precautions, she’s set up four candles, one lit at each of the four corners. Yuko and company set up the same precaution during the hyaku monogatari in xxxHolic. It didn’t work too well for them, either, although they had the good sense to stay within the protection of the candles.

  Next we see three other schoolgirls talking about experimenting with spells. Actually, that’s a pretty strong word for what they’re interested in. For example, they’ve heard that a boy will talk to you if you write his name on an eraser. One girl, Shinobu, seems more knowledgeable about this magic than the others.

  Even Satsuki succumbs to the fad, from buying a lucky keychain to a lucky hair-ribbon for an upcoming exam to getting a special manicure to help lose weight. When she gets to school, though, Satsuki sees Shinobu and the other three with a kokkuri-san chart, which they hurriedly hide.

  They gather again in the classroom after school; Satsuki arrives, and they pretty much have to let her stay. Shinobu intones a spell that will grant their wishes within a week. If they speak of the ceremony before then, they will be cursed. Shinobu also reminds them that there is an “escape clause,” but doesn’t tell them what it is.

  That night Satsuki wakes up to find she can’t move; she knows about “sleep paralysis,” although that doesn’t explain the bloody tracks left on her bedroom floor. Worse news comes the next morning, when the teacher calls the roll. He neglects to call one of the girls from the previous night’s kokkuri-san, a Miss Etou;[92] he tells Satsuki that the class has never had a girl by that name.

  The others try to get out of the contract, but Shinobu simply reminds them that she’s at risk, too.

  That night, Shinobu—now revealed to be a spirit named Yamime—comes after Satsuki, who gets help from the other three girls and the demon-cat Amanojaku. Once the other three girls tell Satsuki the demon’s real name, she subdues it with red string (in this case, lipstick lines on a mirror) and sunlight (a camera flash). She then finds out that Shinobu was the name of a student who went missing 28 years earlier.

  CHAPTER 23: GHOSTS AND SEX

  Love and death are suppos
ed to be mutually exclusive. “The grave’s a fine and private place,” according to poet Andrew Marvell, “but none, I think, do there embrace.”

  Japan, however, has traditionally taken the most powerful passions into account. Ghosts who are driven by a single-minded pursuit sometimes find a way to get involved in amorous matters, one way or another, even after death. Traditional legends of people who commit all sorts of debauchery while possessed by a spirit are many and intriguing. Their modern anime and manga counterparts are the same.

  One traditional tale was recounted by Lafcadio Hearn in his collection In Ghostly Japan. As will be seen, this isn’t a ghost story for children:

  70. “I have the twin cherry blossoms!”

  The year, they say, was 1829 by the western calendar; it was spring, and the cherry trees were in bloom. The wife of a certain daimyo had been ill for three years, gradually getting worse and worse, until everyone knew that she was near the end of her days. She thought of many things: her husband, the children she had borne him. And she thought of her husband’s favorite concubine, Yukiko, age nineteen. She asked her husband to summon Yukiko, who quickly came and knelt down beside the couch where the daimyo’s wife was lying.

  “Yukiko, I am going to die. I hope you will be faithful to our lord in all things, for I want you to take my place when I am gone.” Yukiko started to protest these words, but the wife cut her off. “This is not a time for ceremonial words; let us only speak truth to one another. Yukiko, there is one thing I want you to do for me. In the garden there is a yae-zakura[93], which was brought here last year from Mount Yoshino. I have never seen it in full bloom, and I must see it before I die. Carry me into the garden so that I may see it; take me upon your back.”